10/23/95
Lansing State Journal

[Headline] ADAPT plans to protest
[Subheading] Handicapper group prepares for action to improve home aid
By John B. Albright
Lansing State Journal

They're mum about just when and where and what they will do, and to whom they will do it.

But hundreds of people with disabilities rallying Sunday at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Lan-sing were preparing to demonstrate for their cause: more aid-at-home funding for handicappers.

Leaders were describing what's to come as acts of civil disobedience.

"In the past, we have done things like blocking traffic," said Verna Spayth of Ann Arbor, a polio survivor and one of the organizers of the group called ADAPT.

"We have shut down buildings. We have trapped people who could make decisions on the redirection of Medicaid money," she said.

"Trapped them in their offices to give them a little taste of what it's like to be some place, not in control," Spayth explained.

"Strategically placed chairs in front of doors can cause those doors not to open at all," Spayth said, referring to the wheel chairs that she and others were using as they assembled on the mezzanine floor of the Radisson ahead of a welcome address by Mayor David Hollister. "These chairs are rather heavy."

The demonstrations may come anytime today through Wednesday. "We will be in faces for three days," Spayth said.

Members of Denver-based ADAPT — American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today said they are mainly angling for Gov. John Engler's support for more home-aid money from Medicaid.

Denouncing nursing homes as prisons with financial bars, ADAPT members want federal legislation to tilt 25 percent of Medicaid's nursing home funds to pay for personal help in homes of handicappers.

Bill Earl, 32, of East Lansing, among 300 or, more of the handicappers who attended Sunday's session, said he hated his stay some time ago in a Grand Rapids nursing home.

"I was told when to get up, when to go to bed," said Earl, a cerebral palsy survivor now getting about eight hours a day of personal help at his apartment home under Medicaid funding.

Hollister told the handicappers that the new baseball stadium under construction for the Lansing Lugnuts will be handicapper-accessible.

A former Democratic lawmaker in the Michigan House, Hollister said he's been trying to set up a meeting between ADAPT leaders and the Republican governor.

But he's not taking a side on a move to get federal legislation to mark a quarter of Medicaid's $64 billion a year in nursing home funds for home aid.

"What we have to do is eliminate barriers and allow people to be their own advocates, and that's what my role is," Hollister said.

A Community Attendant Services Act, not yet introduced in Congress, would help keep many people with disabilities out of costly nursing homes, advocates have said.

Spending $21,000 a year for home care for one person might head off a $40,000 tab of a nursing home, said ADAPT organizer Bob Kafka of Austin, Texas.

ایجاد شده در

سه شنبه 16 جولای 2013

فرستاده شده در

دوشنبه 23 سپتامبر 2019

آلبوم‌ها

• Lansing, fall 1995

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